Re: Monopoly/Ologopoly

[Stephen Harris <sweh@mpn.com>]

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In a recent message, Leo Smith said:
> 

>  Kent Crispin wrote.................. 
> : 
> : It just seems to me that the goals of the internet are simply not 
> : best met by  monopoly registrars.  NSI is a huge entity, by registrar 
> : standards.  But they don't have a branch office in indonesia offering 
> : registration services in the native envirionment.  With shared 
> : registries international dispersal falls out naturally.
> : 
> Valid point...To achieve the objective outlined above, IAHC should require

But perhaps a bogus point.  If there are enough TLDs and the method of creating
new ones is simple enough, then there would be nothing to stop a registry
opening on Indonesia, primarily for Indonesian businesses.  If a company
wants to register overseas, then that's their decision.

In a "monopoly TLD" situation, there would be nothing to stop inter-registry
reselling agreements, as required.  In a way, this is similar to the IP
peering agreements we have in the UK at Telehouse (LINX).

Further, it would be possible for a "middle man" to arrange bulk rates
with a registry and act as a reseller in these countries, without having
to be a registry himself.  This parallels existing companies (such
as Netnames) who already can register a DNS name for you in many countries
and have even translated the documents into English from the native
language.

Thus, shared registries doesn't necessarily get you any advantage here.

Counter, a situation where shared registries are bad!  Vertical markets.
Say a large society (oh, say a professional body, such as... the medical
profession) wanted to register a .MEDICAL domain and restrict it to
registered professionals.  Under this, they may delegate ISO based SLD's
to the associated medical professions governing board.  The rules for
registering in this domain would be quite easy to enforce in this
monopoly situation.  But if the domain _had_ to be shared, there would be
no guarantee of a registrant meeting the criteria (hundreds of registries
all over the world!) thus diluting the benefit of registering in the name
space, both to the detriment of the profession and the general public.

Conclusion:
Whilst shared registries look like they solve a problem, it is not the only
solution to it (if the problem exists at all).  Further, by enforcing the
shared solution, a whole class of registry is prevented from operation.  I
recommend a serious re-evaluation of the concepts of TLDs, in comparison to
a free market where TLD's can be shared/resold/peered/restricted as required.

rgds

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